Abandon all logic, see the magic around you!

Logic buries the magic in the Universe. It prevents us from seeing how beautiful each moment is.

To see the magic in you, in your Life, around you, you must stop being an adult, abandon all logic and just see everything with a child-like wonder.

While our logical temperament has been honed by years of schooling and social conditioning and while it has helped us grow our careers, it has really stunted our evolution as individuals. Consider your own Life. You, like me, have problems. And, logically, you want those problems resolved. So if the problem is financial, you may want your income to go up and your expenses to come down. Logical thinking. When your efforts at boosting your income come to a naught, you get depressed. Depression leads to scarcity and negative thinking. If your problem is a relationship, you will want to sit down and resolve it. But the other party is just not interested. You grieve. You suffer. If your problem is your health, logically, medication should work. But the doctors are wringing their hands in despair, because they say their efforts are not working. You think death. You believe it’s all over. In all this logical thinking, in all three contexts, you are tormented, you are anxious and you are not present in your every waking moment. You are living in your problems.

And this is where you are missing the magic of the present. Of the myriad opportunities that Life is still offering you. Remember that despite all the problems you are faced with and are seemingly drowning in, Life is going on and WILL go on. There’s magic everywhere. In the rising sun. In the chirping birds. In the smile of a child. In the few friends who are still standing by you. In the fact that you have a home, food to eat and someone to call family. When you are allowing yourself to be gripped in the stranglehold of your problems, you are missing all this magic. Your being wedded to your problems may appear to you to be very logical – after all, you want to solve your problems. But there are problems that you cannot solve. Only time and Life can heal and solve them. This is why being stuck with logic kills magic. American author Nora Roberts says, “Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”

So, love this Life. Know that it won’t last forever. Abandon all logic. Then, and only then, will you see the magic – and beauty – in Life! 

Be happy and all else will follow

Happiness is a choice. Something that’s in your control. You choose to be happy, and immediately, your whole Life transforms.

This is an unalterable law of Life. That if you choose to be the happiness you seek, nothing, and no one, can stop you from being happy. We miss this great opportunity because we are forever imposing conditions for “becoming” happy. We say if we have money, we will be happy. Or if people we live with behave in a certain way, we will be happy. Or that we will be happy when we achieve something – like when we buy a house, or get a raise or become famous. So, between us and happiness, certain conditions have come up. Now, these conditions are quite unnecessary. Happiness is there – in your being. You just have to choose it!

The reason we think this way is because of the scientific conditioning we have received. This conditioning takes you away from you and thrives on the law of cause and effect. We have been taught that for an effect to be there, there must be a cause. Logical. Only if there is a seed, can there be a tree. Only if there is a fire, can there be light and heat. Only if there is a virus, can there be a fever. And so on. But on the spiritual plane, this need not be the only way to look at Life or live it. You can choose the effect and, magically, the cause will follow. And that’s why Life’s more about magic, than about logic. Magic happens the moment you choose to be happy – no matter what your situation is. Then, the right people come into your Life, abundance flows and you become a magnet, a center of attraction, for all the good things that Life can offer. Per this spiritual approach, you are in control, you are deciding to be happy, for yourself. For instance, if you say you will be happy subject to someone doing something for you, then that someone is in control. Not you. That’s the cause and effect theory: subject to certain conditions, you will be happy. But on the spiritual path, the choice is to drop all conditions and choose the effect – in this case, happiness. You simply be happy. Whether someone is there or not, whether something is there or not.

                                                    

The cause is beyond you, outside of you. The effect, happiness, is within you. Choose the effect from within, watch the outside transform, magically! This is Life’s way. This is the only way – to live intelligently and in bliss!

You control nothing – and yet you are the Master!

You are a Master the moment you realize that you can never be one! Or, more simply, you can be in control of your Life when you realize that you don’t and can control nothing! This understanding is all that there is to spirituality!  

Most people don’t see spirituality as the flowering of internal awareness. They don’t get it that its essence lies in understanding an irrefutable paradox about Life __ that the less you believe you control, the more you are in control!

People often see any spiritual perspective as ‘beyond’ them because they are so caught up in the quagmire of worry, anger, guilt, sorrow, suffering and the ‘earning-a-living’ syndrome. They have an ostrich-like mentality _ their heads are buried deep in their ill-formed beliefs. Their minds are closed although there’s so much grace, so much abundance, freely available. Kabir, the 15^th century weaver-poet asked us to think: ‘What if a fish said it was thirsty?’ Wouldn’t that be the most stupidest of situations? Won’t you tell the fish to go re-examine its brain? How can a fish be thirsty when it is always in water? Quite similarly, the human mind is being foolish by seeking peace outside and by not looking within. By not allowing this flowering of awareness to happen from within. So, you conclude that you can’t be at peace, you refuse to look within and choose instead to be enslaved by your self-imposed limitations. Only when the awareness within you blooms, only when you understand that you can be in control while controlling nothing, only then will you see the Master in yourself.

This understanding is elusive because, while being profound, it is, at the same time, too simplistic. That’s why, it doesn’t come to everyone __ especially when  they are employing their education, their logic, in trying to make sense of Life. The truth is Life doesn’t conform to any framework or rules. Least of all your logic. So, Life is simple__and uncomplicated__when you simply accept its paradoxical, often inscrutable, nature.

Look around you. Everything is illogical. Everything is contradictory to what you have been taught, what you have been brought up with or grown up on.

• Consider this - People behave thanklessly. There’s no dignity for human Life. Ethics and integrity don’t always make you successful anymore. You are encouraged to be worldly-wise than be honest and sincere. You find that trust is impossible to place and impractical to earn. Yet all these symptoms of a decadent world are true of people, even if they are from within your close circle of influence, whom you have no control over. You just can’t control what others do. Yet doesn’t all your grief come from wanting them to be different?
• Consider another context - A close friend of mine worked very hard. He was sincere and a genius with his craft __ marketing. He grew up the corporate ladder fast. Because there was none like him in the business. For a man with average qualifications, he earned substantially. He had only one son. And he was saving up for his son to be studying in an American University. Then one day, a few years ago, his 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. His son was not drunk. The driver was. I still remember what my friend told me when I visited him to condole his son’s passing away: “I wish I had known this would happen. I would have then spent enough time with my son rather than spending that time earning money for him!” It is so bizarre. A hard-working father saves up for his only son__only to lose him so tragically?

How can you, despite all their education and logic, ever prevent what happens in Life? But you can surely choose how you respond to people and to Life. You can be grateful, you can be human, you can continue to be ethical, hard-working and honest. You may not earn as much as the others do, but you can sleep well. And doing all the things that you are comfortable doing, you can feel good and peaceful __ within you! This is your personal paradox and you must learn to accept it, appreciate it and live with it! You must, for the sake of your own inner peace, know that you cannot control anyone or anything outside of you in Life. If you can control anything at all, it is just how you live, how you relate to and how you respond to what Life throws at you!

I may have shared this before. There’s this story of the Buddha. The Buddha was passing through a village. The people of that village were against him, against his philosophy, so they gathered around him to insult him. They used ugly words, vulgar words. The Buddha listened. Ananda, the Buddha’s disciple, who was with him, got very angry, but he couldn’t say anything because the Buddha was listening so silently, so patiently, as if he was enjoying the whole thing. 

Then even the crowd became a little frustrated because he was not getting irritated and it seemed as if he was enjoying.

The Buddha said, “Now, if you are finished, I should move – because I have to reach the other village soon. They must be waiting just as you were waiting for me. If you have not told me all the things that you thought to tell me, I will be coming back within a few days, then you can finish it.”

Somebody from the crowd said, “But we have been insulting you, we have insulted you. Won’t you react? Won’t you say something?”

The Buddha said, “That is difficult. If you want a reaction from me, then you are too late. You should have come at least ten years ago, because then I used to react. But I am now no longer so foolish. I see that you are angry, that’s why you are insulting me. I see your anger, the fire burning in your mind. I feel compassion for you. This is my response – I feel compassion for you. Unnecessarily you are troubled."

So beautiful, isn't it? Another's thoughts and actions are not in your control. What happens to you in Life is not in your control.

This is the state we must all ascend to. When you awaken to this reality, you will discover that you are in control ONLY of yourself! That you control nothing and yet you are the Master! From that clarity, bliss is born! Then everything that matters fills your Life__love, peace, good health and joy!